Hitman 2

The data for Hitman 2 with the Intel Core i3-12100F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER reveals a combination that is heavily constrained by the graphics card at higher resolutions, while demonstrating the CPU's capability to push high frame rates at 1080p. The measured results provide a clear picture of a system tuned for 1080p gaming, with performance degrading predictably as resolution increases.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K shows a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern. At Low settings, the transition from 1920x1080 (113.5 FPS) to 2560x1440 (71.3 FPS) represents a 37.2% drop in performance, and moving to 3840x2160 (35.9 FPS) cuts frame rates by roughly another half. This steep decline indicates that the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is the limiting component once the pixel count increases, as the data shows the GPU struggling to maintain playable frame rates at higher resolutions.

The scaling behavior across settings tiers is consistent. At High settings, the drop from 1080p (63.1 FPS) to 1440p (41.7 FPS) is a 33.9% reduction, and further to 4K (23.3 FPS) results in a 63.1% total decrease from the 1080p baseline. The Ultra preset tells an even harsher story: 46.5 FPS at 1080p falls to 32 FPS at 1440p and plummets to 13.6 FPS at 4K. These numbers suggest that while the CPU can feed the GPU adequately at 1080p, the graphics card simply lacks the raw throughput to handle 4K rendering, particularly with higher quality settings.

The frame rate deltas between resolution steps are not uniform, which indicates that the game's engine scales certain effects more aggressively at higher resolutions. The fact that Low settings at 4K (35.9 FPS) barely outperforms High settings at 1440p (41.7 FPS) shows that resolution is the dominant factor in performance here, outweighing the impact of graphical fidelity settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture with a TU116 chip manufactured on a 12 nm process at TSMC. It features 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU operates with a base clock of 1530 MHz and a boost clock of 1785 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). These specifications position the card with a pixel rate of 85.68 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 157.1 GTexel/s, alongside 1408 shading units.

The 6 GB VRAM capacity is a critical factor in this game's performance at higher resolutions. The measured data shows that at 4K Ultra, the average frame rate collapses to 13.6 FPS, which suggests the GPU is not only compute-bound but potentially hitting memory capacity limits. The 192-bit memory bus and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth, while adequate for 1080p, become insufficient as the resolution increases and texture data requirements grow.

In synthetic benchmarks, the GTX 1660 SUPER scores 12699 in Passmark G3D and 5076 in Passmark GPU Compute, with a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1278. The GPU holds a percentile rank of 55 against all GPUs, indicating it sits slightly above the median. Its nearest rivals in average benchmark score include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 (14314, -0.2% delta), Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics (14315, -0.2%), and AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (14389, -0.7%), all of which are within a percentage point of the GTX 1660 SUPER's average score of 14286.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i3-12100F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER ranks at position 1590 out of 1795 tested combos in Hitman 2. This places the system in the lower 11.4% of all combinations tested for this specific game. The low ranking is primarily attributable to the GPU's performance ceiling, as the CPU is capable of significantly higher frame rates when paired with more powerful graphics hardware.

This ranking context is important when interpreting the measured FPS data. While the combo achieves 113.5 FPS at 1080p Low, which is a respectable frame rate, the overall ranking suggests that many other combinations deliver better performance across the board. The percentile ranking of the CPU (72nd percentile against all CPUs) versus the GPU (55th percentile against all GPUs) further confirms that the graphics card is the weaker link in this pairing, dragging down the overall combo ranking.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rates provide a comprehensive picture of performance across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 113.5 FPS at Low settings, 81.3 FPS at Medium, 63.1 FPS at High, and 46.5 FPS at Ultra. These numbers show that 1080p is the sweet spot for this combination, with even Ultra settings maintaining a playable frame rate above 45 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, performance drops to 71.3 FPS at Low, 54.6 FPS at Medium, 41.7 FPS at High, and 32 FPS at Ultra. The 1440p results indicate that while Low and Medium settings remain playable, High and Ultra settings start to approach the threshold where smooth gameplay becomes questionable. The 32 FPS at Ultra is particularly notable, suggesting that the GPU is heavily taxed at this resolution with maximum quality settings.

At 3840x2160, the performance falls to 35.9 FPS at Low, 29.5 FPS at Medium, 23.3 FPS at High, and 13.6 FPS at Ultra. These numbers clearly show that 4K gaming is not viable with this combination, as even Low settings fail to maintain 60 FPS, and Ultra settings produce a slideshow-like experience. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K (35.9 FPS versus 13.6 FPS) demonstrates the GPU's inability to handle the combined load of high resolution and high graphical fidelity.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a 4-core, 8-thread processor from the Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, with a 12 MB shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB L2 cache per core. The CPU supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and its 58 W TDP reflects its efficiency-focused design.

The CPU's performance characteristics are well-suited to Hitman 2's workload. In synthetic benchmarks, the i3-12100F scores 11912 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 1681 in single-core, with a Geekbench multi-core score of 7413 and single-core score of 2224. The 3DMark results show scores of 4051 for 16 threads, 4026 for 8 threads, and 893 for single-thread, indicating a processor that scales well with thread count up to 8 threads but plateaus beyond that.

The measured FPS data suggests that the CPU is not the bottleneck at 1080p, where the system achieves 113.5 FPS at Low settings. The CPU's nearest rivals in average benchmark score include the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX (13534, -0.1% delta), Intel Core i7-1250U (13462, 0.4%), and Intel Core i7-7700K (13280, 1.8%). The i3-12100F's average benchmark score of 13516 places it in the 72nd percentile against all CPUs, indicating solid multi-threaded performance for its core count.

The fact that the system maintains over 60 FPS at 1080p High settings (63.1 FPS) confirms that the CPU can feed the GPU sufficiently at this resolution. However, the frame rate differences between settings at 1080p (113.5 FPS at Low versus 46.5 FPS at Ultra) show that the GPU becomes the limiting factor as graphical complexity increases, even at the same resolution. This suggests that the i3-12100F has headroom to support a more powerful GPU should the user choose to upgrade, as the current bottleneck is clearly the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER.